Front Page / Titelseite

NASA Insight Mars Lander

NASA’s InSight Sends First Pictures

Touchdown on Mars! NASA’s InSight Lands to Peer Inside the Red Planet

NASA’s InSight lander touched down safely on the Martian surface today (Nov. 26), pulling off the first successful Red Planet landing since the Curiosity rover’s arrival in August 2012 — on the seventh anniversary of Curiosity’s launch, no less. Signals confirming InSight’s touchdown came down to Earth at 2:53 p.m. EST (1953 GMT), eliciting whoops of joy and relief from mission team members and NASA officials here at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the InSight mission. A few minutes later, the team received confirmation from the lander that it’s functioning after the landing. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

An enhanced Long March 3B with a Yuanzheng-1 upper stage lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 2:07 p.m. Eastern Nov. 18 sending two Beidou satellites directly into medium Earth orbits at around 21,500 kilometers altitude. The launch was consistent with airspace closure notices issued Nov. 15, with amateur images and footage (link in Chinese) providing the first evidence of the activity.

Zarya: Live Broadcast

The first component of the International Space Station – the Zarya Module – was launched on november 19th, 1998, by a Proton rocket. Combining interviews, VT inserts and feeds, this transmission from ESTEC in the Netherlands provides live coverage of the event.

20 questions for 20 years: Happy Birthday International Space Station

This week we celebrate 20 years since the first International Space Station module Zarya was launched into space on 20 November, 1998. To mark the occasion, we are answering 20 of your most frequently asked questions about Alexander Gerst’s time on board the orbital outpost. Read on to be enlightened…

Space Station Astronauts Mark Their Home’s 20th Birthday with a Video Message

The three astronauts living and working on board the International Space Station took a moment to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the very first piece of their current home, touching on what they see as the value of the long-term project. Their recorded video message, combined with a one-on-one interview with NASA’s ISS program manager Kirk Shireman, make up a new video released by NASA to mark the anniversary.

International Space Station at 20: A Photo Tour

‚An Entirely New Way Of Thinking‘: The ISS Celebrates 20 Years in Space

For two minutes, NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao could see nothing but blue-marbled Earth swirling above his head. „Surreal“ is how he described the moment. Chiao was in the middle of a lengthy spacewalk to assemble part of the International Space Station, an orbiting laboratory the likes of which had never been seen before.

Astronauts Snap Amazing Last Glances of Space Station For 20th Anniversary (Gallery)

NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage

On Nov. 26, NASA will make history on Mars. The space agency’s newest Mars probe, the InSight Mars lander, will touch down on the flat plains of Elysium Planitia to study the Red Planet’s core like never before. Armed with a crane, heat probe and seismometer, InSight will look deep to understand Marsquakes and other Martian secrets. See our full coverage of the mission below.

Front Page / Titelseite

What to Expect When InSight Lands on Mars

If all goes well, anxious space fans on Earth will learn of a successful InSight landing on Mars on Monday, 26 November 2018, at 19:53 UTC. As with all Mars landings, no one who is watching will be able to do anything to affect the outcome; all we can do is wait and hope everything works. JPL shared a great video featuring Mars landing engineer Rob Manning explaining how everything works. Here, I made you an infographic to follow along with the action.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover on Mars Is Rolling (and Drilling) Again

After suffering a couple technical glitches that have put NASA’s Curiosity rover off its duties on Mars this year, the robotic explorer seems to be back in full health, having driven to a new site and drilled a sampling hole, according to NASA statements.

Elections Can Have Consequences Billions Of Miles Away

“NASA programs — especially Orion, which is focused on putting humans back on the moon — could be in trouble after Republican U.S. Rep. John Culberson lost his House seat to Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. Culberson, a Republican from Texas, led the House Appropriations Committee that funds NASA for the last four years.”

Front Page / Titelseite

ISS: NASA 8K-Video

NASA’s 1st 8K Video from Space Is Just Awesome

High-definition video has a new home: the International Space Station. A new video from NASA shows the astronauts working on their experiments, recorded in 8K imagery so clear that it makes it feel like you’re floating right alongside them. „Microgravity unlocks new worlds of discovery,“ reads text in the video, which was a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). „The science being conducted aboard the International Space Station is answering questions that hold the keys to our future in space and on Earth.“

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Just Made Its First Close Pass by the Sun!

One of humanity’s newest spacecraft faced a harrowing test late Monday night (Nov. 5), darting just 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) of the surface of our sun.

That spacecraft is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which launched in August with a daring mission to study the star that shapes our lives. To do so, it is flying a course of 24 close loops around the sun, the first of which reached what scientists call perihelion — the moment of closest approach — Monday at 10:28 p.m. EST (0328 GMT Nov. 6).

Front Page / Titelseite

‚It’s Going to Be Historic‘: New Horizons Team Prepares for Epic Flyby of Ultima Thule

In less than 10 weeks, NASA’s New Horizons mission will explore the most distant target ever visited by a spacecraft. In the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 2019, New Horizons will ring in the New Year by flying past the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) officially called 2014 MU69 but nicknamed Ultima Thule, a city-size rock regarded as a frozen relic from the birth of the solar system. Although scientists have a rough size estimate for Ultima Thule — about 23 miles (37 kilometers) wide — they don’t have much more information. They aren’t sure if it’s elongated, if it has a moon or ring system or even if it’s a single object. Indeed, some of the very limited observations of Ultima Thule suggest it might actually be two close-orbiting bodies. [NASA’s New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

Sojus Fehlstart / Soyuz launch failure

Russian official says Soyuz rocket failure caused by an errant sensor

Although the official report on the cause of a Soyuz rocket failure won’t be released until Thursday, a Russian official disclosed its central conclusion a day early, the country’s news agency TASS reports. Sergei Krikalev, the executive director of „manned programs“ for Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, said a sensor on board the rocket failed to properly signal the separation of the first and second stages. As a result, one of the side-mounted rocket boosters did not separate properly from the vehicle and collided with the rocket.

A NASA Spacecraft Just Broke the Record for Closest Approach to Sun

A NASA sun-studying spacecraft just entered the record books. In April of 1976, the German-American Helios 2 probe made spaceflight’s closest-ever solar approach, cruising within 26.55 million miles (42.73 million kilometers) of the sun. But NASA’s Parker Solar Probe zoomed inside that distance today (Oct. 29), crossing the threshold at about 1:04 p.m. EDT (1704 GMT), agency officials said.

Hubble Space Telescope returns to science operations

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, 26 October, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, 27 October. The observations were of the distant, star-forming galaxy DSF2237B-1-IR and were taken in infrared wavelengths with the Wide Field Camera 3. The return to conducting science comes after successfully recovering a backup gyroscope that had replaced a failed one three weeks earlier.

Hubble Space Telescope Update

The mission engineers and scientists for the Hubble Space Telescope have been working to correct some technical issues with the gyros that point the venerable space telescope. Hubble went into safe mode a couple of weeks ago and now seems to be back to resuming normal operations. Join Tony Darnell and Carol Christian as they discuss what happened with Hubble, how the problems were discovered and a fix found. We’ll also explore other topics related to Hubble, such as, how much longer will it be around? Will Hubble last long enough to overlap JWST?

NASA’s Planet Hunter Kepler / NASAs Planetenjäger Kepler

Number of Habitable Exoplanets Found by NASA’s Kepler May Not Be So High After All

The tally of potentially habitable alien planets may have to be revised downward a bit. To date, NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope has discovered about 30 roughly Earth-size exoplanets in their host stars‘ „habitable zone“ — the range of orbital distances at which liquid water can likely exist on a world’s surface. Or so researchers had thought. New observations by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia spacecraft suggest that the actual number is probably significantly smaller — perhaps between two and 12, NASA officials said today (Oct. 26). [Photos: Gaia Spacecraft to Map Milky Way Galaxy]

NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope, Passes Planet-Hunting Torch

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

Top Science Results from the Kepler Mission

Planets outnumber stars.

Kepler has proven there are more planets than stars in our galaxy — and knowing that revolutionizes our understanding of our place in the cosmos.

Small planets are common.

Kepler has shown us our galaxy is teeming with terrestrial-size worlds, and many of them may be similar to Earth in size and distance from their parent stars. The most recent analysis of Kepler’s discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars in the sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky planets that are in the habitable zones of their stars where liquid water could pool on the surface. We still have much to learn about whether any of them could host life.

Kepler By the Numbers – Mission Statistics

NASA’s First Planet Hunter, the Kepler Space Telescope: 2009-2018

NASA’s Kepler space telescope spent nine years in space, collecting an unprecedented dataset for science that has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos. It found our galaxy teeming with planets — more planets even than the stars — and stunned the world with many other first-of-a-kind discoveries. Profoundly, Kepler found planets that are in some ways similar to Earth, raising the prospects for life elsewhere. What did it take to lift a mission of this magnitude off the ground and keep it going? Here is a walkthrough the odyssey of the Kepler mission — from the earliest kernel of an idea, through its obstacles and into its most stunning moments of discovery and success. As NASA’s first planet-hunting mission, Kepler’s legacy will live on for generations.

The most prolific planet-hunting machine in history has signed off. NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which has discovered 70 percent of the 3,800 confirmed alien worlds to date, has run out of fuel, agency officials announced today (Oct. 30). Kepler can no longer reorient itself to study cosmic objects or beam its data home to Earth, so the legendary instrument’s in-space work is done after nearly a decade.

Kepler Planet Hunting Mission Ends

„After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations.”